The Framework › Personal
Stress & Well-Being
Distribution of responses
How institutions vary
Middle 80% of the 40 institutions with enough responses. Personal domain mean: 7.6.
Institution is a major factor here: weaker and stronger institutions are 4.2 points apart on this topic. Where a student studies shapes their experience more than the topic itself does.
What we ask
“I’m feeling well.”
What students say, and why
Assessment is the trigger: the lowest scores cluster around exam fear and self-doubt.
"The tests pressure me, so I don’t perform as well as I could."
"I’m constantly afraid I won’t pass."
"I overthink it and work myself up until I can’t concentrate, and then I forget everything."
Where stress is managed, students describe routine help-seeking and perspective.
"If there’s a problem, you just have to ask."
"I learn a lot and I’m not under constant pressure."
Representative, de-identified comments from the lowest- and highest-scoring responses, translated where needed.
Related insights
Students rate almost everything well. One thing stands out: academic stress
Across millions of student check-ins, scores cluster between 7 and 9 out of 10. One thing students rate sits well below the rest at 6.0: managing the stress of studying.
MethodFeedback as an early-warning system
A once-a-year survey tells you who struggled after they’ve gone. Continuous check-ins surface the signals (falling belonging, rising stress, the exam-window wobble) while there is still time for a person to act.
PatternExam confidence isn't a fixed trait. It cracks at exam time.
Exam confidence averages 6.7 out of 10, but it swings by roughly two points across the year and bottoms out at 5.4 during the spring exam window.
How we measure it
This is the topic-level average across its subtopics, on a 0-10 scale (higher is better), so an individual subtopic can score higher or lower than the topic shown here. Figures are scored responses from the last 12 months, mapped to the 2026 framework via the canonical question mapping; the cross-2020 figure on the Index uses the full response base. Movement compares the most recent six months with the prior six. Distribution bands: 0-4, >4-<8, 8-10. Cross-institution aggregate; no single institution identified; minimum group size applied.
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